


Five Objects Of Desire

by Sarah T (SarahT), The Spike (spike21)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-21
Updated: 2008-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-01 21:56:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20418008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahT/pseuds/Sarah%20T, https://archiveofourown.org/users/spike21/pseuds/The%20Spike
Summary: And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you’re going to fall…





	Five Objects Of Desire

1.

The drug makes John pliant in a way that leaves Rodney sweetly sick under his skin. It’s not just the way John lays sprawled across their mat, mouth slack with bliss, eyes showing thin white crescents under the lashes. Not just that Rodney has to turn him, feed him water, wipe his chin. It’s not even that he can curl up around John in the predawn gray while John, surfacing from the evening dose, strokes his back with cold, languid fingers, murmuring “S’okay, Rodney. ‘M be okay.” It’s just that until the sun comes up, Rodney lets himself believe.

2.

Teyla straddles his thigh roughly, syringe clutched in one hand, tubing in the other. "Time, John."

John falls back and looks up at her. There's always that moment when he doubts, but her eyes gleam and he doesn't have a choice, anyway. He reaches to balance her. She doesn't need it, but she works her hips against his grip, grinning. The enzyme has washed away so much--her reserve, her patience--leaving a woman of the battlecry, slim and flaring pure destruction. Kali, Rodney sometimes groans when she pushes him against the wall, Kali, goddess...

She ties the tubing around his arm and flicks her finger against his skin, watching the vein come up with avid eyes.The needle bites.

The enzyme takes him differently than it does them, slower, deeper. A drop of blood beads on his skin. She presses her finger to it and licks it off, breathless, waiting. The power slides into him, and so does _just like the rest of us_ and _not left behind_ and _I love you_\--

"Better." She kisses him, biting at his lip. He pulls her down to him, hard. They both want the bruises.

3.

From his office overlooking the Area 51 hangar, Rodney could hear the laughter rising up in bursts--high, nasal, unembarrassed--and his heart sank. Only three months this time. No, he thought, calling up the encrypted file and glancing at it, a full week short of that.

He closed the file, but kept his eyes fixed on his laptop screen, trying to will the sound away the way he'd willed away a hundred parental arguments, a million teasing grade-school chants. But that worked about as well as it always had; a couple of minutes later, Radek was in his doorway, a little breathless.

"John is here," he said.

Of course it was "John" now. Everyone who remembered Pegasus was on a first-name basis, whatever it had been like before. Labrats whose names he couldn't even _remember_ called him Rodney, and he wasn't allowed to glare. (He took it out on them later. No one had thought to make a rule against that, and none of them were smart enough to catch on, either.)

"Well, isn't that nice."

"Are you coming down?"

"Maybe later."

"But we might go out--"

Of course. Everyone loved John now, even people who had hated him back in Atlantis. He was the hero, the story that bound them all together. The prince who'd fallen out of the fairy tale with them, but still had a little magic.

"If John wants to see me, he knows where to find me." He started typing, loudly, knowing that Radek would be able to tell he was entering gibberish if he looked closely enough. But Radek only muttered something in Czech and left.

It took forty-five minutes. Enough time downstairs to be respectable, and a little extra.

"Hey."

Rodney looked up. John was leaning against the doorjamb, grinning. Carefree, jovial John with his shock of unruly hair and his rumpled SGC uniform. Little smile-lines around the eyes, a jaunty tilt of the head. You didn't have to look at him twice to know he hadn't changed one bit back in the Milky Way: still impulsive, still a pain-in-the-ass, still the guy you wanted on the ground covering your back when things got hairy.

"Don't," Rodney said. "Just don't."

John shrugged and kicked the door shut behind him. When he turned back, his shoulders had slumped and drawn in on themselves, like he was huddling against a high wind no one else could feel. His eyes jerked here and there, seeming to scan for patterns they couldn't latch onto.

"I need some more," he said quickly, and threw himself into the only other Chair in the office.

"It's only been eleven weeks, John."

John wasn't looking at him. He had the general air of someone in a doctor's waiting room, bored and wanting it over with. His leg jittered up and down. "So?"

"I hate to be the one to point this out"--and his voice sounded unbearably snide, even to him--"but the intervals are getting shorter and shorter."

"Worried about running out, Rodney?"

"Right. Inventory. That's my chief worry."

Rodney had done the research in the SGC archives. In recorded history, no carrier of the gene at John's levels had been so consistently exposed for so long to so much Ancient technology.

Not that the Ancients had said anything about that, when they kicked them all out.

Not that they would have bothered. Probably they figured that if the humans were too dumb to work out the consequences of hanging around the shiny machines, they deserved whatever they got.

Rodney was repenting almost four decades of lofty superiority to the rest of the world, too late.

"Look, if it's security you're worried about, I can--"

"It's killing you," Rodney blurted. "Each one I give you helps less and less, and look at you already."

John's smile tightened a little. "Thanks."

"No, really, _have_ you looked at yourself lately? I mean, when you're alone, not when you're playing Lieutenant Colonel Wiseacre for the SGC."

"Well, Rodney, that's pretty much my whole life now, so, no. I haven't really looked." He shifted in his Chair. "Are you going to help me, or aren't you?"

He was afraid to ask what John would do if he refused. All roads led to Leavenworth from there. He opened up one of his drawers and took out the device, smooth crystal with a few interfaces sprouting from one end. John jerked forward suddenly, then braced himself against the movement, clutching the arms of the Chair.

"What is it?" he asked lightly, as if nothing had just happened. God, and Rodney had used to think John didn't give a damn about his dignity. "Egg timer?"

"Grow lamp," Rodney answered. "Good for crops. Katie would kill me, if she knew."

"You get 'em back," John said. "Eventually."

When they stopped working for him. Each of them did, eventually. The gate at Cheyenne Mountain had gotten him through the first year, but after that...

Rodney could see John's shoulder trembling with the effort not to reach for the lamp. He swallowed and handed it over.

John's fingers had barely closed on it when he went stiff all over, stiff and radiant, head thrown back, limbs splayed. A dancer frozen mid-step and held, straining to get to the next movement. Not a seizure.

Rodney had been there for the actual seizure, before.

No, this was ecstasy. Coming out of yourself. Not something he had a lot of experience with--it had always sounded so violent. Another uselessly correct call by Doctor McKay.

Then it was over. John was sprawling, loose and satisfied. And pale. There was sweat visible at his temple, just where the hair was starting to frost.

You'll never drift apart now, a nasty little voice told Rodney triumphantly.

"Thanks, Rodney," John sighed. He carefully tucked the lamp away, then stopped to pat at it a few times, shifting it around.

"You couldn't just get homesick like ordinary people?" he said. He was trying to smile, but his voice wavered so badly that he thought he was going to have to turn away.

"Apparently not." Now John had his rueful grin--his real grin--the grin of facing all the things that had gone wrong that couldn't be helped, from Afghanistan to the last withdrawal of Earth forces from Atlantis, and Rodney did have to turn away. "I'll see you around."

"That seems like a certainty," Rodney said, and began typing again, blindly, on the keyboard. He'd let John make a dignified retreat.

4.  
When the door slams open, of course it's Ronon behind it. "Sheppard, why aren't you--"

He looks down, at John seated on the bathroom floor, the little brazier, all the implements.

"Oh."

There's nothing to say, and John won't insult Ronon with some fake grin, some barbed joke, some bullshit excuse. He only waits. He knows what disappointment looks like. He should have known it would only be a matter of time until he saw how Ronon wore it.

Ronon only looks at him. "That stuff's addictive," he says, low and gravelly.

John swallows back a hysterical chuckle. "Yeah."

"It speeds up reaction time, but it gives people heart attacks."

"Yeah."

"You could get sent home."

"Yeah."

John's still waiting, the soothing glow of the Isilaryian black nectar curling back to reveal an edge of sickness beneath. He hadn't realized just how much he had gotten used to having someone looking up to him until this moment.

Ronon crouches down next to him.

"Where are you getting it now?"

"MX-2810," he answers automatically.

Ronon shakes his head. "We're going to have to get you a better supplier."

John stares at him. "Ronon--"

"You need it." It's not a question.

"Yeah."

Ronon rests his hand lightly on his forearm. "Then we'll get it for you."

"But--"

"You need it," Ronon repeats. "I'll get it."

Can it really be as simple as that?

Ronon picks up the tiny brush with which John has been daubing the paste into the pinpricks. It looks ridiculous in his large fingers, but he bends carefully to his work.

Apparently it can.

5.

John thinks he’s well clear of the Traveler’s ship when he uncloaks the jumper.

He’s wrong.

He wakes up strapped down hard in the Captain’s Chair of the Ancient battleship. The skinny guy…Nevik is fixing some Ancient device to his wrist. It looks like antique jewelry, curliqueued metal and cut crystals.

Larrin watches from a few feet away. She is leaning against the console, arms folded, and she’s not smiling. She _should_ be smiling. He would be if he’d outmaneuvered someone as badly as she’s outmaneuvered him. It’s a little unnerving.

“Jeez,” he says. “I know I’ve been playing hard to get, but trust me, this is not the way to jumpstart our relationship.”

“Stop fucking around, Sheppard,” she says. “Fly the ship. It’s not too much to ask.” Nevik is still fiddling around with the thing on John’s wrist and it’s making him nervous but he just _tsks_, pretending regret.

“It’s more about the _way_ you’re asking…” he says.

“You still think this is a game,” Larrin snaps, angry and earnest. “It’s not a game, John. You’re going to fly the ship, whether you agree to or not, so why not agree and save us both the heartache.” She’s good, John has to admit. And yeah, attractive as all hell. There’s probably something therapy worthy in that thought. Too bad the closest he’s come to therapy is late-night listening to Johnny Cash.

“Got a long line of heartache,” John says. “I carry it well.“ Larrin looks annoyed, then disappointed. Then she shrugs.

“Do it,” she says to Nevik, who pushes down on the wrist bracelet, pressing it into the arm of the Chair. There is a click as it slots in and the wrist band tightens almost painfully. He can feel the hum of something Ancient responding to his gene.

There is a gentle tingle in his wrist that climbs a sweet shiver up his arm. John just has time to think _uh-oh_ before he feels it - a touch, a brush of pressure, achingly tender as a first kiss against his thoughts.

*

Three days after Sheppard’s jumper goes missing Rodney picks up an old-fashioned Earth S.O.S flashed across subspace.

“Finally!” he says. He calls Teyla and Ronon and takes his data to Sam. He grits his teeth waiting while she ponders the tablet in front of her for what feels like eons. He imagines John tied, running, kneeling at the feet of some Wraith queen, shot, crashed on some forsaken barren plain… He resists the urge to snatch the tablet away from her. He’s learned.

“Where is this, exactly?” Carter asks. Rodney reaches over, points to a numbered dot on the screen.

“MX7 321,” he says.

“The Peyana,” Teyla says. “We have made an alliance with them, but it is not strong.”

“We should contact…”

“They’re barely out of the Bronze Age, Colonel,” Rodney says. “And this message came from space. Unless they launched Sheppard with a big catapult…” Sam gives him a look that is more calming than quelling. She’s not _trying_ to kill him. _ John bleeding, John burned, John staggering drunk with his arms around blonde twins in pink houri pants…_

“Any sign of Wraith?” Sam asks.

‘What?” Rodney’s brain lurches out of the image, back to the tablet. “Oh. No. Well, yes, a couple of hives, a few cruisers - the usual.”

“What difference does it make?” Ronon asks. Sam gives him a small, humourless smile.

“In the long run, none,” she says. “In the short run: take Lorne.”

“Right,” Rodney says, snatching the tablet back the second she moves to offer it. Three days. The last ast time they’d lost him for three days. _ Sheppard screaming behind the gag, Sheppard crumbling to dust…_

Lorne meets them at the puddlejumper and all told it’s less than six hours later that they arrive at the location the signal was broadcast from.

Even so, they are too late.

*

A month later they hear the first rumours.

“We are not so near the Ring as some villages,” the old woman in the ragged orange cloak says to Teyla. “but our people have been preyed upon less than a turning past and so we thought they would pass us over so we did not hide. They could have had us all.”

“But you were not culled,” Teyla says, looking around at the bustle of people in the village center, the smoke from cooking fires, the women carrying laundry to the river, the children playing a catch-can game around the village square.

“The culling beams came down,” she says. “There were Wraith in the town center, but then the Ship of the Ancients appeared.”

“Same as the others,” Rodney mutters. “Big ship? Black and scary? Appeared out of nowhere and blasted the Wraith to smithereens?”

“Yes!” the woman says, eyes brightening as she turns to him.

“Let her tell it,” Teyla says shortly to Rodney, and more kindly to the old woman. “Please, tell us what you saw.”

“It is just as he says,” she answers. “It fell like a raptor on a scattering of crows.”

“And it did not come through the Ring?”

“Oh no,” she says. “It was a Ship! Ship of the Ancients. The windows of heaven opened for it and that’s where it returned.”

“Windows of heaven?” Teyla asks. It’s not a term she’s heard before.

“Yes,” the woman says. “They open with a flash of light so pure it nearly blinds you.” Teyla sees Rodney mouth the words: windows of heaven and then snap his fingers.

“Hyperdrive,” he says. “Some maniac is jumping an Ancient battle cruiser through hyperdrive windows 200 feet off the ground to save random people from the Wraith. Sound like anyone we know?”

She is not one to jump to conclusions, but Teyla has to admit it really does.

*

It’s not…

He’d thought it would be _bad_. He remembers being angry and that anger had been a bitter thing. Now bitter is the taste of a Wraith dart when it falls burning from the sky and it tastes _good_.

“I love that smile,” Larrin says, lowering herself into his lap. “That smile says some Wraith somewhere is going to die soon.” She leans in and her mouth is hot and sweet. Larrin tastes like the ocean, like blood and machine oil and burnt sugar. Everything wrong and he always wants more. Her leathers creak as she moves against him and he gets a flash of input from the rear port engines. They’d taken damage last time they’d hit atmosphere, burnt out the thermostats. He ignores it, lets the heat build. Red hot, white hot, molten…

It’s _good_. He’s so hard.

An alarm goes off somewhere, piercing and high. Larrin tries to pull back but John uses his free hand to hold her fast. She struggles angrily, gets enough space between them to hiss:

“That’s the drive alarm. We’re running hot somewhere.”

“Burning alive,” he says, pulling her hips into him, grinding up. Another alarm starts up. Main systems. Atmosphere. He can hardly breathe it’s so good. And then it’s just pain, white hot, where she’s dug her elbow in. She doesn’t leave his lap though, just leans back while he gasps for breath. The look she gives him is full of something bitter, burnt black and furious. Then she smiles.

“Silas,” Larrin says, crisply over her shoulder. “Get a team suited up and ready to do repairs.”

“There’s nothing we can do if he won’t-“

“Oh, he will,” Larrin says. “Won’t you, John.” It’s not a question and John remembers anger. The way it really tastes, burning through the haze.

“Fuck,” he says through gritted teeth. “You.”

Larrin just laughs. Grinds her hips down on his.

“Nevik,” she says, not taking her eyes off John. “This piece of machinery isn’t functioning properly. I think it needs another adjustment.” The scientist bustles up. John can feel the cold brush of his fingers against his trapped wrist.

“He’s not due for another half-day,” Nevik says. “If we push the dosing schedule any more, it could-“

“Kill him,” Larrin says. “Yes, I know. But he’s no good to me if he keeps trying to blow up my ship, Nevik. So if you don’t mind…”

It’s John who struggles then, but Larrin traps his free hand while the scientist fiddles and tweaks the device on his other wrist. He struggles and tries to hang on to the anger, to the hate, to the cold certainty of who he is and what he’s going to do.

It’s no use. The rush, when it hits, washes everything away.

*

The rumours keep coming. Different now. More cullings aborted, but fewer crazy stunts; fewer daring rescues but more strategic recovery of cocooned humans and now battles in the heavens that light up the night skies, the hulks of Wraith hive ships found in pieces on the ground, the Ship a beacon of hope to everyone but the Lanteans.

Their ability to predict the Ship’s movements improves. They usually miss it by mere hours. A few days at most. Once even by a handful of minutes -- the residual signature of the hyperspace jump hanging in space like a taunt. They have no doubt that it’s Sheppard at the helm, but the why and how of it they don’t know.

It’s not that they can’t make guesses. It slips into conversations whether they want it to or not. _ Is he…? Would he…?_ It’s just that most of the guesses are too terrible to consider. Of all of them, coercion is the most palatable and that says something that none of them want to examine too closely. Not even Rodney.

It’s another four months before they catch a real break. Word of a space battle so big that flaming stars fell to earth, leaving scorched ground around the village. Many of these remnants have been found and brought to the head shaman for further study. One of the sacred relics is clearly a drive pod of Ancient design.

Several days later, Rodney has their position fixed. Sam gives them two jumpers and a squad of marines. Lorne volunteers to pilot.

*

Even from their cautious distance, they can see that the Ancient ship is badly damaged - the hull breached and leaking atmosphere and radiation in equal measure. It’s berthed in some kind of ramshackle space-dock with dozens of tiny platforms set around it like scaffolding and people in patched EVA suits doing repairs.

Lorne flies Rodney, Ronon and Teyla in, in a cloaked jumper and they and the marines board the nearly abandoned ship without difficulty. They make their way to the bridge without meeting any resistance. Without meeting anyone at all, in fact. There are only two people on the bridge - the Captain and her beefy second in command.

Ronon stuns the second and has his gun to the Captain’s head before she can take a breath to curse him. Rodney moves immediately to the main console. Teyla and Lorne fan out to cover the exits, their weapons up and ready

“Where’s Sheppard?” Ronon says into the Captain’s ear. He cups her face almost tenderly but the barrel of his gun cuts a crescent into her temple.

“Who-“ She begins to say, but he tightens the forearm across her throat, cutting her off before she can finish.

“I suggest you do not lie,” Teyla says, her foot across the throat of the stunned man on the floor.

“Chair room,” Rodney says, not looking up.

“Never mind,” Ronon says to the Captain and stuns her, point blank, and lets her fall.

*

Nevik doesn’t hear the raiders arrive. One minute he’s deep in concentration trying to decipher the Device’s new pattern of cycles, the next he’s dangling at the end of a long, muscular arm and he can’t draw a breath. For a moment he can’t make sense of it at all, and then he realizes what the raiders are after.

“Don’t!” he croaks, feeling panic rise. He struggles feebly in his attacker’s grasp, but the world is narrowing to a long black tunnel. There are voices - angry, desperate voices. He hears the short, rude buzz of the Device being tampered with..

There is a moment where the blackness begins to crash in on him and then suddenly he is released. Nevik falls to his knees, coughing weakly, and scrambles in the direction of the Chair. Idiots! One of them is attempting to jimmy the mechanism open and the other, a woman, is trying to pry the prisoner from the Chair.

“Stop,” Nevik croaks. “Stop, don’t--” His voice gives and he breaks down in to choking coughs again, but at least the raiders have stopped trying to disconnect the prisoner.

“What is that thing? What have you done to him?” the woman demands.

Nevik manages to get to his feet before the sound of a charged weapon amping up stops him. The bearded, wild-haired raider who choked him has a gun - one of their own blasters- pointing at Nevik’s head. He wonders who died for that weapon to be in their enemy’s hands.

“We-“And Nevik stops, recognizing in the sudden stillness, the uniforms of the raiders - the _rescuers_ \-- standing over the prisoner.

“Answer her.” The man, _Sheppard’s_ man, shoves him violently back against a wall. Nevik’s head rings. The gun is pressed against his temple.

“Ronon…”

It’s Sheppard’s voice, hoarse but gently chiding. Over his captor’s shoulder, Nevik can see Sheppard -- head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut, hands flexing and releasing against the Chair’s arm panels. A new cycle must have started.

“Sheppard?” Ronon asks, without turning to look. “You okay?”

Sheppard’s laugh is a rough, lazy thing that sends a chill down Nevik’s spine. The hand on Nevik’s chest doesn’t falter but something flickers across the man’s fierce, bearded face. Anger rises in Nevik’s throat. Words. They were out of choices. They had done what was necessary to survive and that hasn’t changed.

But he had known all along that it was a lie. It was one thing to use the Ancient device a few times to make Sheppard fly the ship for them, but to bring him down to the heart of the control center and install him like another piece of hardware… The flush that heats his cheeks is more than part shame and he drops his gaze.

“McKay?” the big man asks over his shoulder, not taking his eyes from Nevik’s.

“Working on it,” McKay says. “It’s like he’s hooked up to the main proc--” There is a click and a buzz and Sheppard makes a soft, terrible sound. No!

“He’ll die.” Nevik chokes out. “If you disconnect the interface--” He remembered Sheppard’s escape attempt after they’d used the new settings on him only three times. They hadn’t even had to lock him up after that. And now, of course, the cycles were practically continuous.

“Shut up,” Ronon says, slamming him back so hard he sees bright stars inside his head.

“Got it!” McKay shouts at almost the same moment.

“Say goodbye,” Ronon growls. Nevik feels death in his tone like a drench of cold water and his eyes close without his willing them.

And Sheppard starts to scream.

*  
It takes ten of the longest minutes of Rodney’s life to get John hooked back up to the device and the device hooked back up to the Chair. John doesn’t stop screaming and writhing the whole time, like he’s burning alive, and Teyla throwing her whole body weight down on him barely keeps him from curling up out of the Chair.

The instant they have him plugged in, though, it stops. John’s whole body goes limp and Rodney’s so certain he’s unconscious (or God, for all he knows, dead) that he jumps when John’s fingers brush his hand.

He looks up and meets John’s eyes.

When Rodney says he doesn’t believe in God, what he means is, he doesn’t know if God exists or not, but he never wants to be a believer, because there is something intensely creepy about the religious kind of mindless bliss.

“Thanks,” John says, all breath and no voice at all, and Rodney shudders and has to look away.

*

It’s just as well Rodney has an interesting problem to concentrate on. It’s surprisingly easy to get the Traveler scientist to talk and Rodney never used to find science in the service of military objectives disturbing, but weirdly, his exposure in Pegasus is making him more squeamish.

That he understands why they did what they did; that he can see himself doing the same in different circumstances doesn’t help. It wouldn’t bother him if it weren’t Sheppard, but it _is_ Sheppard and he... has to concentrate.

The bottom line is that he can’t separate Sheppard from the device for more than a few minutes without killing him and he can’t separate the device from the Chair without losing the power source. That was the problem the Travelers found themselves stuck with - once they’d plugged Sheppard into the Chair, they couldn’t move him anywhere else.

Rodney wastes some precious time trying to figure out how to take the Chair with them and it’s enough time, apparently, for the Captain in the catwoman leather bodystocking to regain consciousness and try to get her ship back. Teyla runs off to take care of that and just about the time she radios back to say that they have control of the entire ship, Rodney has come up with a much better idea.

“I’ll need a few hours and she won’t exactly be battle-ready,” he tells Ronon. “But we’ll be able - well, Sheppard will be able - that is, of course, we’ll need his cooperation...”

“Spit it out, McKay,” Ronon says. He looks dangerous in a sad, reckless way that makes Rodney flinch every time Ronon looks at him.

“We’ll just take the whole ship back with us,” Rodney says. “Maybe Keller can...” He cuts his eyes surreptitiously to Sheppard.

“Can you do that?” Ronon asks John, bluntly. “Fly us back to Atlantis?”

For a moment there is no response. Sheppard, with his half-closed eyes, his boneless sprawl - there hardly seems to be anyone there at all. But then a slow grin breaks across John’s stubbled face.

“Atlantis,” he breathes. “Oh yeah...”

*  
Sam Carter’s gaze keeps getting caught by the video feed from the Ancient battleship that’s parked in orbit around Lantea II. There’s no sound, just the real time activities of the engineering and medical crews going about their business, and Sheppard in the middle of it all, sprawled in the Chair, head tipped back like he hasn’t a care in the world.

“--definitely Ancient,” Keller is saying. “Drs. Zelenka and McKay are still looking for any entries into the database but so far we have nothing definitive. From our own examination, we can say that the device works in the brain the same way any other addictive substance works - by flooding the accumbens nucleus with dopamine and causing the natural dopamine emitting cells to shut down. The mechanism isn’t chemical though.”

“What is it then?” Sam asks, bringing her attention back to the woman across the table. Keller looks apologetic.

“We’re not sure,” she says. “It _seems_ to induce the brain to overproduce its own dopamine in response to certain fluctuations of its output, and _only_ its output. But what that output is…” She shakes her head, and shrugs apologetically.

“Can you wean him off it?”

“We’re hopeful,” Keller says. “Rodney’s team is working on figuring out how to control the device’s cycles. It’s possible that if we can dial him back slowly his own physiology will take over again.”

“But that’s not assured,” Carter says.

“No,” Keller says. “There’s a possibility that we’ll have to supplement his neurochemistry on a permanent basis.”

“That’s not a great outcome,” Sam says. Her gaze flicks back to the screen. Sheppard’s head is still thrown back, but his eyes are open. It looks like he’s looking up at something hovering above him.

“Is he hallucinating?” Sam asks..

“We don’t know,” Keller says. “He can’t or won’t tell us what it’s doing to him and it’s impossible to get a reliable brain scan while the thing is running.”

“He doesn’t look unhappy though,” Sam says, absently. There are tiny crescents at the corners of Sheppard’s mouth, poised to break into a grin like he’s hearing the setup for the best joke in the galaxy.

“No,” Keller says. “That’s the part we’re most worried about.”

*

It’s… nice to be home, John thinks in the lazy slow way he’s gotten used to. It probably takes him 6 or 7 eons to complete the thought, each word, each meaning, dragged up from under the gray-rainbow-shimmer-void that fills most of his universe, only to spark briefly across his sky and vanish again.

It’s like fishing with an anchor for a pearl at the bottom of the Marianas Trench and those words too, those images, those meanings surface and submerge again, so slowly he can barely remember that he’s actually chasing one particular thought.

Still, he manages it. There’s not a lot left of him that still wants to fight, but there is this thing inside him that never stops - not when he’s tired, not when he’s hurt, not when there’s nothing left to keep going for. It’s the thing that drags the pieces together long after he’s forgotten that he’d had a thought in the first place. He has no idea what the thing inside is called, only that it in one strangely stretched-out moment of lucidity, it gives him this:

It’s nice, he thinks, to be home.

Then the rush comes and everything is gone, gone, gone.

*

It’s Zelenka who works out the device’s cycling mechanism and Rodney has a moment of icy jealous rage that it wasn’t him before the relief hits him. He sags against the console he’s been sweating over. His mind has been so fucking blank since John’s… screaming… he’s been certain all along that they would fail.

They call a briefing as soon as they work out how to control it. Keller decides on a withdrawal schedule and within an hour they have Sheppard hooked up to monitors and IVs and scanners and Rodney has the jury rigged controller in his hand. Teyla is there beside him, bowstring taut, but her hand on his shoulder is gentle and encouraging.

“Go ahead,” she says. Gingerly Rodney engages the interrupter.

John doesn’t scream.

*

He doesn’t scream and he doesn’t scream and he doesn’t scream and he doesn’t scr--

*

He blinks into light that is too white, too brutally raw. He tries to shut it out, turn his face away but it’s everywhere. It’s cold and he aches.

“Be still, John.”

Her voice is… it’s too loud, but it’s warm. It’s… warm. Softer edges than the light anyway. If he could just get closer.

He squints blindly into the unbearable bright. He can’t see her, but he can smell her - the soap she uses, the bite of leather, the spice of her skin.

“Teyla,” he says aloud. His voice is awful. His throat feels like he’s been swallowing gravel.

“Yes, John, it’s me,” she says and her delight is real and warm. He turns toward it and something heavy and rough slams down on his hand like a slab of concrete. He flinches away and the weight disappears, leaving only the ghost of pain

“Oh, John, I’m so sorry,” she says. Her voice rattles him like thunder. There is a high pitched whine filling his head. His skin is tearing everywhere it touches. He thinks maybe he’s felt worse than this but he can’t remember when. All he can remember is that there is a way he doesn’t hurt. Something like Teyla’s voice, a warmth, a fullness. He hangs on to that.

When the rush comes, he realizes it’s nothing like Teyla’s voice after all. By then, he really doesn’t care.

*

It gets better. It gets worse. He wakes more, forgets less. His skin and senses stop being so oversensitive, but now he’s more aware of specific discomforts. His sore throat, weak muscles, aching joints. The constant gnaw of hunger. Now he is aware again of time passing, of time having passed.

“How long?” he asks Teyla one day. Teyla is often there when he wakes - sometimes in the cot they have set up for him, or in the Chair as he is now. She looks thoughtful for a moment, purses her lips.

“You went missing almost five of this world’s months ago,” she says. “We found you just over a month ago. Two weeks ago Dr. Keller began to wean you off the device.”

Two weeks. A month. A half a year. It comes to him as flashes of disjointed recollection interspersed with a sense that he is missing something huge and important. Something just on the edge of memory. He waits for it to turn and come clear but nothing happens.

“How much,” he swallows. “How much longer?”

“I do not know, John,” she says, gently. “But I believe that in part, is up to you.”

John just nods, even though all he wanted to know is how much longer until they turn the device back on.

*

The time between sessions gets longer, the time he spends under the device’s sway shortens in inverse proportion. In between, his thinking clears. By the time they turn off the device for the last time he knows where he is. Mostly. Knows what happened. More or less. Knows who he is. In a way.

For a long time he’s been someone.. some_thing_ else. Not even a person really. A point of view.

A hunger.

Now that he’s John Sheppard again, he’s not entirely sure what that means.

“How are you feeling, John?” Dr. Keller asks. John thinks about it. Thinks some more. His head is buzzing. There’s a lot of stuff rolling around in there he could try to make an answer with, but most of it he doesn’t even have words for.

Keller is biting her lip.

“Probably shouldn’t be a hard question,” he says. Keller smiles, relieved, and rests her hand on his arm.

“You’ve been through a lot.”

John nods even though he wasn’t really there for most of it.

There’s only one thing he’s certain about and he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to let Keller in on the joke. The thing is, if they let him - if he let himself -- he would turn the device back on again and never come out.

But he’s not going to do that. He’s good at self-discipline. Well, _was_ good at it. He supposes this little interlude counts as a mark against that, but it’s over and he’s back at his old familiar stomping ground: Square One.

“I can do this,” he says to Keller. “I will… do this.”

He means it with all his heart. He just wishes that made it true.

*

“So,” Sam says, looking up from the report she has read at least fifteen times now. “What do you think? Is he fit for duty?”

Keller looks down, looks away, looks down. Finally meets Sam’s gaze.

“Honestly?” she asks.

“Yes,” Sam says. “Of course.” Keller shrugs, shakes her head.

“Yes,” she says. Sam isn’t sure how to take that. The course of Sheppard’s mending has been nearly letter perfect and Sam is suspicious of perfection by nature. She doesn’t like things that seem too easy, and the steady upward tick of Sheppard’s recovery, passing each milestone of healing exactly as projected - it sets off alarm bells.

And yet he _has_ recovered as far as she can tell, has sweated for every check mark. He’s even gone to counseling sessions with the interim SGC psychologist, taken the literature on addiction, done the exercises, come up with the right answers. It’s not that she thinks he’s cheating the system it’s just…

She glances at Keller who is studying her clean, pink fingernails. She knows what Keller means. He’s working at recovery and he’s succeeding. He’s clean and whole and strong.

He’s just not quite John Sheppard.

The question is, is that grounds for ongoing deferral of duty?

And if it is, what about all the other Atlantis personnel who aren’t John Sheppard at the moment either? She has to smile at that. It sounds like something Teal’c would say.

“Okay,” she says to Keller. “Thanks for your input.” Keller looks up, surprised.

“Oh!” she says. “I hope you don’t think I-“ Sam puts up her hand.

“You did great,” Sam says, dismissing her, and really, she has. John’s quick recovery has been nothing short of a miracle. Sam really tries not to have a problem with miracles. After Keller leaves, she steels herself and calls John in to give him her decision.

*

Ronon finds John in the tac room, gearing up.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” John answers, not looking up from the boot he’s tying. Ronon watches him covertly as he checks his own gear.

John still looks bad to him - no meat left on him, just skin, sinew and bone. He looks older too, fingers of silver running through his hair. Wraithtouched, even though no Wraith did this. Just humans. Treacherous lying humans… Ronon’s hands remember the easy give of that scientist’s pale throat and curl into fists. His teeth slide together, roughly. He knows if John were to look up and see all this anger he can’t put away he’d be worried. He’d say something, something lighter than he meant and it would make something let go in Ronon’s chest and it would make it easier to pack it all away again.

John doesn’t look up though. He just moves from his boots to his vest, methodically checking the pockets and then to his weapons, checking them just as meticulously.

Ronon’s still seething close-mouthed over a snarl that wants out when Teyla and Rodney come in to get their gear.

*

The mission to MPX 334 goes smoothly. More or less smoothly, Rodney amends. More smoothly in the way of finding the villagers there still know of Teyla and don’t hold a grudge against the Lanteans or want to kill Ronon on sight and actually have grain to trade and a need for basic medical supplies. Less smoothly in the way in which John… _isn’t_.

‘Isn’t what?’ is the question, of course. If he were to try to explain this to anyone, for example, Sam or Jennifer Keller, that’s what they’d ask. Because obviously there is a subject, a thing that John isn’t - well, there are lots of things that he isn’t but Rodney can’t put his finger on it. He just _isn’t_. He isn’t himself, of course. That’s obvious. But then he hasn’t been himself since… well, who knew how long he hadn’t been himself - but he hasn’t been the self, the him that Rodney knows since the moment in the Chair when Rodney had deactivated that machine and he’d started screaming.

The thought, the memory of it still makes him nauseous. Like the time he’d heard the mousetrap he’d set under his desk at Northeastern go off and looked, expecting to see a dead mouse, only to see a live one, dying and thrashing and… He swallows, looks at John’s back, ahead of him on the path.

Still a good half-hour hike to the Gate and that’s really all he’s seen of John all day. And it’s just… Okay, John’s not screaming anymore, which is good. Yes. Very good. And really, there had only been that one time - after that things had gone much more smoothly, quietly and maybe that was the _isn’t_ \-- that John is just so much quieter now.

But it’s not that either. It’s more than that. More than John not sharing the joke with him anymore - John didn’t always do that anyway, and really that was _not_ what he was worried about. It’s not like he was going to go to Sam and tell her, look, we should all be worried because the Colonel just isn’t any _fun_ anymore. That would get him the McKay, You Insensitive Ass look and deservedly so. It’s not about that, although that, in fact, is true.

The thing is, and he has actually had enough time to think about it, what with the noticeable increase in the amount of time he is not occupied with chess, or stupid arguments about superheroes, or forced soldier training of one kind or another, or impromptu rides in the puddlejumper or hanging out. It’s not that John is no fun with _him_ anymore, it’s that John doesn’t seem to be any fun anywhere, with anyone, any time anymore. Not even - and Rodney is absolutely certain about this -- not even with himself.

It’s not like Rodney hasn’t tried. Really he has gone out of his way more than he ever imagined himself doing for anyone. Even Katie. He’s offered movies, new games, new discoveries. Out and out _straight_ lines, for heaven’s sake. He’s dropped hints of things that John might find, if John were to head to a certain lab or a certain puddlejumper. Things without himself involved in any way. And John has just given him that quick, false twitch of lips -- schematic for a smile, he thinks - and slipped away. Really slipped away and Rodney knows this because the movies remain unwatched, the games unplayed, the puddlejumper upgrades untested… John just isn’t interested.

And it’s not much of a thing, a symptom to report. Obviously others with better interpersonal skills are keeping an eye on him, the medical team, Sam, Teyla… everyone, really. They’ll all have noticed this, in all likelihood - Rodney can admit this -- well before he did.

The thing is, it feels serious to him. More serious than just not being fun, or not being interested or not… whatever. Whatever John _isn’t_. That’s what’s wrong.

Rodney has no idea how to even being to contemplate fixing that kind of thing, or even if it can be fixed.

He only knows that if it isn’t, John isn’t really back with them at all.

*

The concept of “space” as the Earth people used it was familiar to Teyla. It was how her people and most of the peoples she knew dealt with strong emotions in others. Strong feelings were like spiked pits. One did not charge into them bluntly and directly, but neither did one pretend they did not exist. One… acknowledged their existence, stepped carefully, built bridges across them with ritual, with song, with the gentle contact of a head touch - a closeness that did not require meeting another’s gaze.

Not all the Earth people felt this way of course - Rodney it seemed had never met an emotional pit he didn’t want to throw himself into with horrifying abandon - nor even did all the people joined by the Rings, but she’d always felt an unspoken understanding of this with John.

It was one of the many ways in which she and John had somehow mirrored one another across such distance as could barely be imagined. One of the things that deepened her trust of him, her sense that her true destiny lay with him and these, his people.

She had thought… No, she’d _known_ what John had needed to deal with his anger and his grief at what had been done to him. He had needed time. He had needed space. He had needed gentle acknowledgement of what had happened and the unspoken message that he was still loved, still known.

She had given him all this, freely, in the confidence that when he was ready he would find his way to begin again, just the way her people had, from culling after culling, from loss after loss. In the way John always had, the moment always coming to one or the other of them first, but never too far after one another. A tender look, a warm smile, one of them would lean in and the other would follow, forehead to forehead they would stop and feel the warmth of skin, breathe one another’s breath and know that the other was still there.

She took a deep breath in, let it out slowly. The forms still grounded and centered her. Past and it’s grief, the future and its terrors - these things were far from her reach, but each moment that she was alive, each breath she took, these she could have and feel the deep joy of simply having them. At least that was what she strove for, even if she achieved it only rarely.

And not today, apparently. For all she could think about in this one present moment was John, his past, their future. The way she’d misjudged things, seeing strong emotion hidden in the way his eyes slid away from hers, from everyone’s. In the way his steps fell, heavy and springless on the ground. The way he led only by taking point, no longer making plans or decisions only waiting for the rest of them to finish arguing and make one for themselves.

They’d accepted it as John, healing, and had given him space. So much space…

Her eyes felt hot and she deliberately slid into a less accommodating pose. Perhaps Rodney had it right after all. Perhaps if she had pushed him earlier and harder to spar with her, to sit with her, to stop his foolishness… At least then she would have seen what she had missed.

It wouldn’t have caught her by surprise. She had felt the moment come. The two of them alone by the small watch-fire flickering inside its cage of rock. Rodney’s muffled snores rising from his small puptent to one side, Ronon’s from beneath his lean-to on the other. John quiet as he always was now, but his eyes on the flickering fire had gone soft and distant.

They’d been sitting close and she could feel the warmth of him at her side against the night’s settling chill, and she’d felt the moment come - the relief melting her, smile tugging at her lips as she bent her head toward his and leaned in…

Leaned in, waiting breathless and there was nothing. She had looked up, puzzled. She’d been so certain, she hadn’t needed to think about it. She’d known…

But when she looked up, John’s face was blank. No closer. Nothing in his eyes but that sort of vague discomfort she’d seen, she realized now, far too often when he thought no one was watching him.

She’d only blinked at him, shocked to real silence - the kind without warmth or meaning - and looked away, strangely shamed. She heard the rustle of movement and felt the warmth of him retreat. When she looked up, he was gone, slipped away into the dark. Still somewhere out there in the dark, she feared, no matter that she could stand within arms reach of him the next time they geared up for a mission, or really any time she chose. Instead she continued to give him “space”.

There was exactly as much space between them now as between any worlds without a Stargate to join them.

Teyla sighed and gave up on the forms and the peace they failed to deliver. Instead she simply sat and curled her arms around herself, forehead pressed to her own bare knees, trying to conjure just a little warmth.

*

Atlantis and John and SGA-1 slowly settle into their new configuration. John is still the ranking military officer on Atlantis, but in truth he leaves most of the decision making to Colonel Carter and Major Lorne. He knows neither of them is particularly comfortable with that, but since no one has confronted him directly with it, he’s assuming they are willing to let it go. It’s not like John shirks his duties. He attends all the briefings, fills out all the paperwork Atlantis generates, puts his two cents into the gaps where it’s required. Not more than two cents though - his mental pockets are pretty empty. And it makes the meetings go faster if he doesn’t argue.

Not that there’s anywhere else he’d rather be. The gym, the mess, the firing range, his quarters - they all feel the same. Like the empty rooms of a house where someone died - dusty and too warm. Full of endless waiting.

Only the Tac room feels something like alive.

(The Chair room would too, says a little voice in John’s head, but it’s the same voice that reminds him how _good_ it was so he’s not going down there, even if he can’t really say why he bothers fighting any more.)

But the Tac room he can do. And the Gate. He may not care the way he used to, but his body still responds, makes the adrenaline flow. He feels lighter when they go offworld. He likes to range ahead, breathing the natural air, alert for anything that might be danger. He likes the way it lets him not think beyond the instant of the next step and then the next.

Likes it less when they encounter actual danger, though. It’s not violence he craves - too much thinking required when you had to shoot and run and keep track of the enemy and the others and the Gate. Likes it even less when they meet up with friendlies, or find some interesting piece of tech. Then it’s back to waiting. To finding the energy to push through the fog of distance and drum up smiles and words.

Especially the ones that would keep his team at bay. Unlike Sam and Lorne, his team just won’t leave it alone. At first it just irritated him. He got it, they cared. Fair enough. But he doesn’t have what they want from him.

(If he ever _did_ have it - and he’s not even sure if he ever really had, because how easy had it been to core him empty? Pretty fucking easy in the end.)

He doesn’t have it and they more they ask with their eyes and their offers and their touches, the more John feels like he’s trapped and smothering -- the more he wants to run. And he already knows there isn’t anywhere better for him to run to.

So, he blinds himself to it as best he can. He avoids eye contact, sidesteps touch. Keeps himself alone in public places. Smiles and slips away. There is a comfort in keeping his world simple like this - one he eventually recognizes, though it takes him much longer than it should, as familiarity. He’s come this way before, after Afghanistan, when he made a clean, white slate for himself in Antarctica. It puzzles him a little, how much easier it had seemed back then. He keeps expecting to fall into the same easy, silent groove but people - his Team -- keep pushing into his personal bubble. McKay with his unsubtle bribes for attention; Teyla with her constant need to ‘connect’; even Ronon with his sidelong looks and little shoves and pushes. It’s wearing, all the work he has to put into staying out of their way without forcing a confrontation, but it’s not like he has a choice. Even if he were to take them up on the friendship that’s so relentlessly on offer, what then?

It’s not like he actually has anything to give.

Probably that would be his best bet for getting them to back down. Letting them see the nothing that fills him so completely. He’d do it, only he can’t even bear to consider the idea. It’s worse than thinking about the Chair.

(The Chair and the device, the click and slide, the snake of heat that blossoms into…)

He shuts the thoughts down hard and keeps himself very still until the shaking stops. Then he takes himself out into the empty city and runs and runs and runs.

Ronon hears about the ship in a bar in the marketplace on Durath. He takes it for rumor and gossip at first. The scarred, pock-faced drunk who brings it up is a veteran of the bar scene, a man in the ragged remains of mercenary’s clothes, tale-telling for drinks and not shying from exaggeration if it will get him an extra cup. Ronon keeps to himself – he’s on the enforced once-a-month leave day – but he can’t help overhearing the old man’s stories of getting lost in the desert of a cold, empty world and finding the hulk of an Ancient warship buried in the sand; a ship “so long it took three days to walk it from end to end.”

Stories of the Ancients and their great machines turned out to be very popular among this early crowd and so Ronon gets to hear the tale several times, each time in more elaborate detail. He would have ignored it all together had not the old man pushed unlikely detail one step too far and gotten himself challenged.

“It’s the truth and I can prove it,” the old man says, indignant.

“Prove it then,” says a merchant from a group of locals that has slowly trickled in as the day market closes. “If you can, I’ll set up your drinks from now till closing. If you can’t, then let us have an end to these boring fairy tales and off you go to spoil someone else’s night.” This brings a laugh from his companions.

“I can,” the old man says, red faced and sputtering. “I can and I will. You just wait here!” He runs off to the hoots and jeers of the fickle crowd.

He does not return and Ronon thinks no more about him until he closes out the bar and leaving nearly trips over the man, curled up in the alley beside the back door. The drunk wakes with a snort and staggers to his feet.

“You!” he says. He is drunker than before, and Ronon recognizes the stink of the local moonshine. He moves to step around the man, but the man holds out a hand. “You tell them!” He’s holding something under his jacket, one arm curled around it protectively.

Ronon’s pretty sure that even if it’s a weapon the man poses no threat, but it’s easy enough to turn the man into a choke hold, pry the item from his hand.

“No!” the old man cries. “It’s mine! I found it. Give it back!”

“Take it easy, grandpa,” Ronon says, gently, turning the thing around in his hand. It’s a little larger than his hand, a curved wedge of heavy black metal with irregular edges. Ancient, from the warm, smooth feel of it and more than that, Ronon recognizes the material – the weapon burnt outer hull of an Ancient warship. He takes a steadying breath.

“Where did you get this, old man?” he says.

“Told you,” said the drunk. “From that ship. I walked it end to end; there were chips and chunks of this stuff in the sand around it. For a just a cup I’ll tell you the whole story.”

“You’ll tell me the whole story first,” Ronon says and the old drunk sobers up fast enough to just nod and follow Ronon to his room.

*

Ronon pays the hotel keeper twice the going rate to let the old man sleep it off in his room and keep him there until he returns.

He brings Teyla back with him and wakes the old man up with a tankard of watered wine and makes him tell her the stories. There is less hyperbole in the cold light of morning, but the stories don’t change much. Teyla has never heard of the cold, desert world or the ship, but she recognizes some of the other places and folk he describes.

“Some of these I know for myself,” she says, thoughtfully. “Some I only know second hand. I will contact my sources and see what more truth I can glean.”

“You don’t think it’s a waste of time?” he asks. Teyla looks at him intently and shakes her head.

“I do not,” she says.

“I don’t mean the ship,” Ronon says. “I mean this. Us.” He can’t meet her gaze anymore. He looks away.

“Ronon,” Teyla says. “I don’t think this is a waste of time. Not for Atlantis and not for us. I believe that… that everything that made us a team remains. But it is…dampened, like a fire in times of trouble. Even after the trouble has passed, one must still find the way to rekindle the sparks.”

“I know,” Ronon says. “I figure if anything would…”

“I agree,” Teyla says. “And if it doesn’t, there is not much left to hope for so let us be sure before we try.”

They go to Rodney next. Even with Teyla’s shored up versions of the old man’s adventures through the Ring it’s not a lot of intel, but Rodney has found more with less. It turns out the old man had, in his younger, presumably more sober days, worked as a mercenary on various worlds and although his account is a little garbled, with Teyla’s additions and the help of the database there is enough detail that Rodney is able to narrow the possible locations down to three.

Zelenka, meanwhile, has confirmed that the flake Ronon chipped from the old man’s piece of metal is indeed the same substance as had formed the hull of the Orion and that it has in fact been exposed to both space and Wraith weapons fire. Still…

“Look, this isn’t--” Rodney says, waving his hands vaguely over the mess table where he sits with Teyla and Ronon. “I mean we’re going to tell him, right? We’re not going to _not_ tell him. Are we?”

Ronon rolls his eyes but Teyla lays her hand very gently on top of his hand and squeezes.

“We will tell him,” she says. “When we have the go.”

Sam has to work to hold her excitement in check. If this ship exists, if they can find it, if it’s not damaged beyond hope, if they can repair it – there are so many ‘ifs’ with this mission she hesitates on principle.

Sill, if, if, if and if they pull it off, the potential reward is huge. An Ancient warship is nothing to sneeze at. They’ve already had and lost two, and yet even for the brief period of time they’d had them, they’d been worth every sacrifice. She glances back down at the reports. The risk here is no greater than for any other exploratory mission, which means it’s on the high side of normal. It’s potentially manpower and resource heavy too.

When it comes right down to it though, the only issue Sam has is with the people in front of her. And the person who is not.

“You want me to okay this mission without consulting your Team leader,” she says, clarifying, if only for herself.

“It’s not like you don’t have the authority,” Rodney jumps in. “You can send us off on any mission you want. That’s why it’s good to be the boss.”

“Thank you for pointing that out, Rodney,” she says with careful mildness. “But the chain of command has to work both ways if it’s going to work.”

“We don’t want you to override John’s authority,” Teyla says. “We simply want to be sure that if we present this possibility to him and he… approves of the idea, that there are as few obstacles as possible in the way of carrying it out.”

Sam bites her lip, choosing her words carefully.

“I understand your concerns,” she begins. “And I want you to know that I’m not comfortable with manipulating the chain of command for personal—“

“Dammit,” Ronon growls, slapping his hand down on the table, already halfway to his feet. Rodney’s face is a crumpled mask, but Sam keeps on, maintaining her tone.

“—for personal reasons. However,” she says, raising her voice slightly and waiting until they are all paying attention again. “In this case, I think the potential value outweighs the potential harm.”

“So that’s…” Rodney says.

“You have a go.”

*

Rodney radios John from the Gate room as they’re setting up to send the MALP.

“You might want to see this,” he says, almost blowing it in his eagerness, but John just grunts his assent and a few moments later the transporter spits him out. Rodney tries to catch his eye, but John keeps to the edge of the room, behind the marines, arms folded across his chest. Rodney shares a disappointed look with Teyla and signals Chuck to dial the Gate.

The view through the MALP is pretty much as the old man said it would be. The sky is a dark, polarized indigo; the sun a tiny white spark like an arc welder’s torch high in the sky. The desert is barren, windblown dunes in washed out shades of blue all the way to the horizon.

The microphone picks up the roar of wind; the hiss of sand in crackling bursts. Rodney starts the 360, unable to resist glancing at John every few seconds. If John were actually watching _him_, there’d be no way he wouldn’t notice. But John’s eyes are on the screen like everyone else’s and so Rodney gets to see John’s reaction the very second the MALP camera picks up the towering black bulk of the Ancient ship.

Or more precisely his lack of reaction. It’s the quiet gasps of the others in the room that pull his attention back to the screen – John doesn’t even blink.

It’s hard to get a sense of the scale of the thing, or of the dunes themselves. There is nothing remotely human sized in that image. Even so, the overall impression is of looming mass.

“It’s a ship,” Chuck says, sounding genuinely shocked and Rodney has to bite back a sarcastic snap. Of course Chuck’s surprised. He wasn’t part of this useless, stupid subterfuge. Rodney’s eyes wander back to the screen where other technicians and scientists are pointing out data points. It really is an amazing sight. Maybe John was too surprised. Maybe he was just in shock. Rodney looks back at John’s side of the gateroom.

John is gone.

*

They catch up to him in the gear room. He keeps his head down, tries not to hear their excitement but it’s impossible. Rodney is going a mile a minute, babbling about the Orion and the Aurora and the possibilities. Ronon is radiating a tight impatience that shows itself in slammed locker doors and loudly racked weapons. Teyla is the worst. He can feel her, hovering just on the edge of his vision, waiting to catch his eye, find a place to break in on his silence. When he doesn’t give her one, she makes her own.

“You seem eager to be going on this mission,” she says, awkwardly hopeful.

“Sure,” John says, not looking up.

“I mean, you came to prepare even before we had our briefing…” This time he hears apology in her voice. She knows he knows. He doesn’t care. He knows what they’re doing, how hard they’re trying, he’s pretty sure they meant this as gift, not a punishment. It’s just that he’s been numb for so long, he doesn’t know what to do with the feeling that’s building just behind his breastbone.

He wants to jam his fist in there, stem the ache. Stop the thing that’s building before it can get out.

“John…?” she says, too gently. He can only pray that she doesn’t touch him – he has no idea what would happen if she did, but his control feels fragile. Fragmented. He can feel the rest of them, holding their collective breath.

He grabs up his vest and holsters his Beretta. Manages a split second of eye contact before he has to cut his gaze away, toward the door.

“Like you said,” he says. “Eager.” He heads off to the jumper bay, as if by getting enough of a head start, he can take off on his own and leave them all behind.

*

They come through the gate in daylight and the jumper is hit immediately with gusts of wind that the HUD reports are over 100 km an hour. It’s still impossible to take in the scale of the place. The dunes are massive, the sky like a big blue bowl inverted above them. The ship looks solid black from here, a cancer on the landscape, ugly and out of place.

The plan – John’s plan, at any rate – is to fly in as close to the bay doors as possible and see if the jumper can trigger them. That way they’re in, McKay can figure out if the thing is fixable, and they’re out. Somebody else can head the reconstruction team.

He’s pretty sure the team is on board with his idea until Rodney says “Uh-oh.”

“What?” says Ronon.

“Life signs,” Rodney answers and John’s HUD picks them up as Rodney keys in the coordinates.

“Wraith?” John asks.

“I don’t sense any,” Teyla replies warily.

“How many?” Ronon asks.

“Ten, no… eleven.,” Rodney says. “Woah… fifteen. They’re popping up all ov—hello.”

“**What?**” Ronon is up and probably about to strangle McKay. That feeling is back, John’s chest is so tight it’s hard to breath. He doesn’t wait for McKay to figure it out. They come up over the bulk of the Ancient wreck and he can see the Traveler’s ship parked behind it from here. It’s just a cruiser, but he recognizes the rags and tatters style of construction.

He activates the cloak without waiting to be told. No way to know if it’s too late, but it’s all they can do. They’re still a good couple of kliks away, but John pulls a 180, dives and sets the jumper down behind a wall of dunes.

“What is it, John?” Teyla asks over Rodney’s cracked: “Oh my God…” John just breathes while the ship powers down under his hands. He tries to wait until he can pull it all back in, make himself calm enough to answer but his heart is pounding, his breathing refuses to slow and let him talk. He’d wait longer but Ronon’s hand lands on his shoulder and he just can’t do this. Not now, not with them.

He’s out of his seat in a blink, pushing past his teammates to grab a jacket from the storage compartment. He slaps his hand down on the button that lowers the rear hatch. A fist of cold, wind-driven sand drives in through the opening.

“Sheppard, what the hell…?” Ronon says and John has to make himself turn. He tries to get the word out, but he can’t. It feels locked in there behind the pain in his chest, hot and bright as glowing metal. All he can do iss stand frozen in front of Ronon, teeth clenched painfully.

But Ronon reads it somewhere in his face.

“Travelers,” he says. Hearing it spoken aloud is almost too much for John to stand, yet somehow it frees himfrom his paralysis. He nods, once, tightly -- and then he’s out of the jumper, into the sand.

*

The wind is bitter and the hissing roar of the sand sounds like static in John’s ears. It staggers him back into Ronon who rights him. Ronon has a scarf wrapped around his head. John pulls his hood tight and tugs his shirt over his nose and mouth, pressing his sunglasses against his face. Looking back over his shoulder he sees Teyla helping Rodney wrap what appears to be a kind of woven shawl around his head. She is wearing something like a balaclava pulled down over her own face.

Ronon grips his shoulder and John automatically twists away. But Ronon only points ahead of them. From the ground, the Ancient ship looks like a mountain or a fortress. There’s no sign of the Traveler’s ship, but John’s got the image of it in his head.

The problem is that every time he thinks about it, he think about _her_ and this thing, this… thing. He doesn’t want to name it, because naming it might be enough to break his hold on it and he’s not entirely sure why that’s important, but he knows it is. He needs to focus, right now. He doesn’t _know_ anything. This could be anyone.

“They’ve stopped appearing like Jack-In-The-Boxes,” Rodney says right into his ear. He glances to the left before he realizes it’s his headset Not good, John. Focus. He squints into the wind. Rodney goes on: “There’s still at least twenty of them on the ground.”

“What are they doing?” Ronon asks.

“Clustering,” Rodney says. “They’re on the other side of the ship still, at the… northeast corner, for want of a better coordinate. What are we going to do?”

There was a pause while Ronon considered. John had gotten into the habit of waiting him out. Ronon did okay -- he’d lead his own squad back on Sateda – and John hadn’t really cared enough to make decisions for anyone else in a long while. So he was as surprised as any of them to hear himself say:

“We can’t let them have that ship.”

*

Jarvith doesn’t like being planetside. None of them do. The air smells weird; the gravity’s too high and sky overhead is opaque as a broken viewscreen. It makes him twitchy, his gun coming up with every skirl of sand. Even the Ship looks wrong – half buried in the sand like a dead, rooted thing.

Jarvith shivers. It’s cold here. Colder than space ever could be. How long now? he wonders. The Captain and her tech crew have been inside for 17 cycles already. Surely they’d have been some sign if the thing were fixable. Nothing though. A gust of wind whips sand against the exposed patches of his cheeks. It stings and he hunches down farther. He can’t imagine living groundbound. He’ll die first. Or slave himself out to the poorest rattletrap as a hullchecker. Anything. He should have done it months ago, but he’d had pride back then.

Pride, a berth, a Captain who wasn’t half-mad with desperation. Fucking Lanteans. A worse pox than the Wraith.

As if the thought conjures something, Jarvith thinks he hears a sound. Hard to tell in this damn storm, but it could be the rising whine of a dart. He counts off the time units, but nothing passes directly overhead. Maybe it’s one of those filthy bird things supposed to live in atmosphere. He nearly gags on his next breath at the thought of what he’s breathing without scrubbers. Thank god for the scarf over his mouth.

Then he hears it again. For real, this time, he’s sure of it. Gingerly he raises his head over the edge of the dune he’s using for cover. Another lash of sand strikes him in the face, knocking his goggles askew. He snatches at them, coughing, pain tears filling his eyes, but it’s too late. The next thing he knows, he grabbed by both arms and yanked up out of his blind. He goes for his radio, but another hand is there before his, yanking the radio off his collar. Another hand straightens his goggles for him. His vision clears.

He’s held in the grip of an enormous, filthy groundlubber. Another one wearing polarizers holds a weapon on him.

“We need this one?” the big one says. The one with the dark lenses moves in closer, grips his face with one hand and tears away his face covering, stares at him. Then he lifts the lenses up.

“No,” he says. Jarvith has a moment to think: _I know this face…_ before the ground comes rushing up like darkness to meet him.

*

They run down the dark corridors of the dead ship, the way lit only by the bouncing beams of their weapons. The strange tightness in John’s chest makes it hard to breathe, makes his head buzz

Ronon’s in the lead and that’s fine, that’s just fine, except in the way it’s not fine at all and John isn’t even sure what he wants only that he knows if Ronon gets there first…

The first shot misses Ronon by inches, ricocheting off the walls like a comet, leaving white worms crawling across his vision. There isn’t time to do anything but flatten himself into the shallow recess of a hatchway, his soldier brain busy triangulating the shooter’s likeliest position, next likeliest, next. He fires his P90, gets fired on in return. The noise in the small space is deafening. Vision is reduced to the strobe of the Traveler’s energy weapons, the tracery of bullets.

In flashes he can see Ronon pressed against the wall of a branching corridor maybe three meters ahead, he can see that there are two other shooters. Bullets zip by him – Teyla’s firing her big gun. McKay is… somewhere. Out of the way, he hopes. Maybe finding them an edge. They need an edge. There are a lot of Travelers. He targets, fires. A body falls on the Traveler’s side and another slots in.

John doesn’t know if the tightness is gone or not. Every shot from every gun forces air from his lungs. Another body falls, another. Eventually the cacophony rings down to silence. Ronon looks back, nods at John and motions with his head. John is already moving.

This time the first shot that sizzles by him is red, not white. He feels his whole left side crackle with energy discharge – a near miss. He throws himself behind a waist high pillar and fires back. The air is thick with the smell of ozone, burnt plastic and dust and he can hardly breathe at all. More Travelers fall, their weapons spilling out over the ground with their blood. He hears a cry from behind him – something short and muffled and then he’s moving forward again.

He didn’t even realize he’d known where he was going until he is suddenly there at the entrance to the Chair room. He pulls up short, sighting down his weapon in an arc that covers the occupants of the room. They are gathered around the Chair itself, the guts of some mechanism spread around them under blue-white light. They are turning slowly, almost in slow motion to look at him. Black leather and white faces, weapons sagging in their hands. He knows…

Something moves at the edge of his vision and he turns and fires. He’s back to covering the rest before the body hits the ground.

He knows these people.

Another flicker of motion but before he can shoot, the blue-white sizzle of Ronon’s gun arcs out at the target. John tries. He needs to tell them to drop their weapons – means to, but he can’t find the words. His jaw is clenched too tight and all that comes out is a breathy sort of growl. Behind him Teyla’s voice speaks words that don’t quite register.

He knows…

The woman near the center of the group stands. The long hair is gone, the face gaunt. There are lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, but the mouth itself is still rich. Red. Her eyes light when they settle on him.

She says something that he guesses is his name. She steps toward him. Squeezing the trigger should be no effort at all but he can’t move his finger. He can’t move anything. She takes another step, the sharp corners of her mouth turning up. There is a weapon in her hand. John sees it all and it couldn’t be more perfect. He lets his weapon fall away and takes his first real breath in months.

The red sizzle is so high and light he barely feels it ghost across his skin.

It doesn’t make any sense to him that Larrin is the one that falls.

*

Things move fast and strange around him after that. There is no more weapons fire. The remaining Travelers aren’t soldiers, they’re scientists and they’re half starved, desperate. Teyla and Ronon strip them of their weapons. Negotiate… something. John steps past them, walks toward the partly disassembled Chair. He reaches out, stops with his fingers so close to the surface he can feel the tickle of dust under them. He feels warmth at his back and turns to look. It’s Rodney, tablet clutched to his chest, his face strangely shadowed in the odd white work lights.

“I… uh…” Rodney says. His eyes are on John’s hand. He glances up but doesn’t meet John’s eyes. “Sorry,” he says, and ducks around John to the back of the Chair.

John doesn’t say anything. He feels like he’s in a dream. He feels like he’s waking up.

Ronon looms up off his left shoulder. He says something and Rodney says something back. John’s fingers light abruptly on the arm of the Chair.

He doesn’t need Rodney to tell him that it’s dead. The whole ship is dead. Dead and cold and the weird feeling slams back into John’s chest, sizzling and red hot, like the energy bolt that never hit him.

This time he recognizes it for what it is.

The sound of it rips its way out of him, a raw inhuman sound that hurts to hear as much as it hurts to make. He rounds on Ronon and his fist connects solidly, painfully with Ronon’s jaw. Ronon’s hand comes up too late as he falls back and John follows him down, the feeling, the… _rage_ driving his punches.

They both hit the ground and the pain in John’s knees is a goad. He’s so… angry isn’t the word. There isn’t a word, he just…

“It would have been … you fuck… you fucker…it would have…” His fists keep connecting with Ronon’s forearms, his biceps. John can fight, but Ronon’s still faster, younger, stronger and all he’s doing is fending John off. It doesn’t seem to matter. He can’t stop. He’s just… He has to…

There is an arm around his chest. Warmth up against his back. Teyla’s voice in his ear is so achingly kind.

“John,” she says over and over. “John…”

It’s like the energy just drains out of him. He keeps punching, kicking, but without force. Ronon sits up under him and his hands come up around John’s biceps, half holding him off, half pulling him in.

There’s a tiny dribble of blood at the corner of Ronon’s mouth. John can’t stop looking at it and then he can’t look at it any more. He closes his eyes.

“Why don’t you just…” He’s still panting way too hard. “Why don’t you just give _up_?”

“Can’t,” Ronon says, pulling him in for a rough hug. It should be claustrophobic, so much warmth, enveloping him, but all he feels is grateful. He’s so tired and they are taking his weight.

“John,” Teyla says again, and he feels the squeeze of the arm she wraps around Ronon and himself. “We will not move on without you.” It’s so true it hurts. He never knew that it would hurt so much to be on the other side of that. His throat closes up and he drops his head onto Ronon’s shoulder. If any wetness escapes, it’s quickly soaked up by the leather of his coat.

Rodney, clearing his throat, saves him.

“That is,” Rodney says. “I’m not good with, uh, well, group hug situations, but, uh, the sentiment…” John can’t help the smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth, though he manages to turn it into a scowl before he lifts his head. Ronon holds out an open arm and Rodney is so quick to join their little circle, his hug so tight…

“John,” he says, right next to John’s ear and John braces because they are speaking nothing but truth now. But Rodney only squeezes him again, hard as if that’s the only word there is for what he feels.

John knows exactly what he means.

And no, he’s not very comfortable like this, on his knees, surrounded by leather and wool and polyester and the dark warmth of shared breath. It even occurs to him that they are not going to let go, _never_ going to let him go and if they are ever going to leave this place and go back home to Atlantis, he’s going to have to be the one to break the moment.

And he will. He will…

But not quite yet. It feels strange and frightening and good. Really good. It _feels_. And just for now, John is okay with that.

[end]

p>


End file.
